


Shot In the Dark (Four Times Emily Knew How To Ease Hotch's Pain And One Time She Didn't)

by FBIEpidemic



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt Aaron Hotchner, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-24 10:11:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14353332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FBIEpidemic/pseuds/FBIEpidemic
Summary: The title my peeps... oh but like a lot of whump (I published this a while ago but deleted because I thought it sucks but since no one agrees with that... it's up again)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pls, leave a note if you like it!

As the stairs came into her field of vision, Emily’s heart sank. Without uttering a word, Hotch flicks his eyes upward. He wants her to finish searching the first floor while he goes up. This, as dangerous as it, is there safest bet. It puts one life at risk instead of them both. 

Except with people, it’s like flipping a double-sided coin and hoping for the side that isn’t there.

Emily follows his order. She makes her way around the corner, her heart in her throat. Her hair stands straight in her arms and she can feel chills running down her legs. “Clear.” The next room has a draft that crosses her ankles and makes her jump to the right in anticipation of someone that isn’t there. 

As she hits the kitchen, her heart drops. If their UNSUB isn’t down here with her that means he’s upstairs with Hotch. “Hotch!” She takes the corner hard, running as fast as she can. She just isn’t fast enough. 

Gunshots ring out. One. Two. Three. Each One making it more and more impossible for him to be alive. 

“Hotch!” She’s at the top and he’s nowhere to be seen. “Sound off,” her voice is choked full of emotion. As an agent, she is supposed to be able to pull herself away from the case. To take emotion from her decisions but voices that shout in her ears, are a testimony to the fact that sometimes you just can’t cut emotion out. 

“Emily? Hotch? Someone respond. Do we have a man down?”

Emily spots flashing white FBI. She presses on her earpiece, seconds from telling everyone that everything is handled. Then she sees the crimson spreading out around the small amount of exposed white t-shirt. “We’ve got a man down. Get a response team in here, we’ve got a GSW to the abdomen.”

Hotch smiles at her but it turns into a grimace as he brings a trembling hand away from his wound. “One in a million shot,” he mumbles, his knees falling out from underneath him. 

“Hotch!” Emily’s by his side, easing him the rest of the way to the ground. “Hey. Hey. Hey.” She whispers patting his cheek to keep his Hazel eyes from dropping shut. “Keep those open, sir.” 

He breathing comes in a gasp and he jerks his head. 

“Talk to me,” she urges. His blood seeps between her fingers and her heart pounds with the possibility that he may not make it. “Just tell me something.”

He nods but comes out from between his already blue lips. His body sags into her and she holds him close. “It’s alright. You’re alright.”

He can smell the scent of her perfume mixing in with her lavender shampoo. Her hairs tickle his nose and he has half a mind to sink into oblivion just like this but he feels her shudder as she holds back a sob. “H-Hailey. She-She wants a divorce.”

Emily’s hand comes to the back of his head, providing him with a comfort that he had yet to realize he needed. “I know, I know and it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

She pushes him back and her warm tender hands are replaced with rough hands that jerk at his body. They pull her away and lay him on a gurney. It’s good too because he grunts out and feels himself falling away. Black pulls him away and he doesn’t know anything else.


	2. Chapter 2

Emily is not bringing him to her apartment because she feels bad or because the feelings that she’s feeling for her boss are more than friendly, she’s bringing him here because it’s either here, a hotel or his apartment with a bloodstain in its white carpet. He’s here because what kind of person would she be if he wasn’t here?

“I would have been fine at the hotel.” He had stayed at Rossi’s for a week and that was only because the doctor said that it would take a week for any more symptoms to show. Rossi had called in reinforcements, aka Emily, so that he wouldn't go back to being on his own. However, to everyone else’s knowledge, he’s at a hotel waiting for his carpet to be replaced.

Emily moves past him to the kitchen, from there she answers,” but you’ll be better, well looked after ‘fine’ here.” She pulls two cups out of her cabinets, opting for orange over beer and moves to the fridge to pull the half-empty jug out. “Plus, you can keep me company and I can make sure you actually take your meds.” 

She smiles at him and hands him the glass,” unlike Dave, I’m not afraid of you.” 

He takes the glass with a grunt and takes a small sip from it. He had watched her eyeball the beer in her fridge and he knows that the only thing that stopped her from pulling one out was him. “You don’t have to drink orange juice on the accounts of me. I got stabbed, not you. We shouldn't both have to suffer.”

She snorts, an honest to God snort. Something that he hasn’t heard in what feels like years. It’s the hatred in the way that he says ‘orange juice’ that does it. She covers her mouth right after that, hiding her smile behind her hand. “I’m not suffering. In fact, I’m helping us both. If I don’t drink you’re not tempted too and I don’t start a bad habit of drinking when I’m stressed.” She lifts her drink up and takes a drink of the pulpy juice.   
He looks down at his drink. His body is beginning to ache at the pace of his heart. Each beat is the pulse of pain that starts at his abdomen and spreads up to his head and down to his toes. 

“I don’t mean to be pushy but Dave said that you usually take a pain pill before bed and well it is 11:42 at night so you’ve got to be in pain.” She rocks back and forth on her heels, afraid that she may have insulted him and terrified that she hasn’t given enough prompting to make him do as she suggests. 

He nods and she knows that this a confirmation of his pain. 

She gets the bottles, all placed in a bag by Rossi, and begins to dig through them. 

“Here,” suddenly he’s right behind her. She can feel his body heat radiating off of him and she stands impossibly still as he grabs the bottle he needs and moves away. He pours two pills into his hand and tosses them into his mouth. “Thank you.”

She tilts her head,” what for?”

He opens his mouth to answer but he isn’t sure what he’s thanking her for. Is he thanking her for staying with him in the hospital? For waiting hours to make sure that he didn’t wake up alone? For opening up her apartment to him? For being his friend even though he’s given her ample reason not to? For making him feel like there is a reason he’s fighting instead of just giving up? 

“Everything.” He looks down at her tiled floor. He doesn’t look up until she steps into his space and sticks a finger under his jaw, lifting it so that he looks into her eyes. 

“That’s what friends are for Hotch.” She steps closer and pulls him into a hug,” we’re here for everything.”


	3. Chapter 3

Adrenaline courses through her veins. Perspiration beats down her brow, threatening to fall into her eyes. Her arms pump to the beat of her legs, her body willing them to go faster. 

The wind bites at her exposed flesh, a reminder that she is not dressed for the weather. 

Neither is he.

Twenty feet ahead, unbeknownst to her, Hotch has already fallen into the frozen lake. Their UNSUB holding him under, even after his thrashing ceased. 

“Hotch!”   
The UNSUB looks up from the dark-haired agent just underneath him. Hotch. That is the name of his newest victim, Hotch. 

“Get off of him!”

The UNSUB looks down the barrel of the new agents gun. He thought he had hit her harder. He’d only been here, he glances down at the watch around his wrist… three minutes. “Hmmm, damn.” He shakes his head in disappointment,” I wish you would have just stayed down.” 

The UNSUB stands and that emotion that Emily is supposed to be able to take away from her actions is so present that she doesn’t blink as she fires three shots. Each one rocks the UNSUB back farther away from Hotch.

Just as the UNSUB had fallen back, Emily falls to her knees gathering her limp friend in her arms. “Hotch,” she calls his name even though she knows she won’t get an answer. He’s hypothermic. His skin like ice against her own. “Come on,” she pats his cheek, hoping to gage a reaction from the still man. 

“Office down, emergency EMT backup is needed. Bring thermal unit.” Thermal unit? She’s half certain she’d heard that on a show once. She pulls her earpiece out, she can’t concentrate if they’re all yelling at her.

She takes a deep breath, one last ditch effort in keeping herself calm, and lays him on to the frozen earth. She pulls his vest off of his chest and rips the white dress shirt away. She attacks the pale flesh in a way that she had never imagined. She curls her hands in and starts to press against his chest.

“Come on,” she urges. 30 compressions to the beat of Staying Alive and one breath. The last time she did this he had laughed at her for singing the song under her breath. She failed her test when she decided to use the dummies arm to hit him. It’s not so funny now. “Come on.” She can’t think of anything to say and suddenly those thirty compressions pass by and she’s hovering over his face. 

“This isn’t what friends do,” she whispers, roughly wiping a tear from her eye. She forces a lung full of air into his still body,” friends aren’t allowed to die on each other, Aaron.” She straddles his waist and sets back into the motion of attempting to make his heart pump blood to his body.

It’s on her third rendition of Staying Alive, on the second set of thirty compressions, that the chest underneath her fights back. It rises to her hands and then coffee brown eyes fly open. 

She’d never been so happy to hear someone gag and choke up liquids. She holds him steady, offering a hand on his back and taking his weight when his arms tremble under him. “I’ve got you,” she rubs circles between his shoulders and eventually he sags against her. 

“How’s your head?” His entire body shakes with a ferocity that could easily be mistaken as a seizure if she didn’t know better. His blue lips chatter to her and she finds herself cupping his cheek and running her thumb along them. 

“You’re more impor-” she’s cut off by a crowd of people surging towards them. Hotch finds himself growing tired and full of fear. He grips her shirt, trying to pull her closer. 

His weak fingers do little to hold her there with him. She eases him against the backboard that the medics bring. His eyes drift shut but a rough hand smacks at his cheek calling something that he’s only partially certain is his own name. 

Panic surges through him and he can hear his own heartbeat mocking him as the medics place electrodes to his chest. Her name hasn’t even completely fallen from his stuttering lips and she’s there. A warmth that radiates all the way up his left arm as she gives it a reassuring squeeze.

His eyes shut once again as his flesh is pierced by a needle. He rests because he knows that he is safe with her. Emily can protect him.


	4. Chapter 4

She’d just closed the tab on her laptop disclosing how to help a partner with PTSD when she heard a muffled cry come from his room. Her heart races, skipping beats and leaping with nerves. Haley and Jack are gone and Foyett is still out there. Hotch is here… most days. 

As she walked around the corner, still not close enough to see him, she could hear his sheets rubbing together as he thrashes in them. No doubt soaked in sweat with tears dripping down his closed eyes. 

Tonight, she can only hope that it’s just Foyett. Foyett is the easiest terror to soothe but ones with Jack are… heart-wrenching. 

“Aaron,” she calls softly. A trick that she had learned very quickly was that approaching his bed quickly only caused a heavier panic. “Aaron.”

Heat radiates off of his body in waves. His skin gleams with sweat. 

Today had been good, he had been good. His hands were steady, eyes focused, and for once he didn’t look like he was gonna jump out of his skin. Over the entirety of the month that Haley and Jack had been gone, Hotch had been through a lot but Emily had brought him through it each time. She was there in New York when Kate died when he’d been shot, and she was there again when an UNSUB attempted to drown him. So when Emily kissed him in front of the entire team and a field office full of officers, only the officers were surprised. 

Her hand reaches out, trembling in the hallway light peeking through the door crack and rest on his shoulders. She hears his breathing change. Suddenly he’s not asleep, instead, he’s seating straight up in the bed. Each breath slightly shakier than the last and coming out in short sobs. 

“It’s alright,” it feels like her personal mantra. A sentence that she is condemned to repeat forever. Along with these lessons on super hearing and calming vocal lessons, she’d learned that before you reach out and touch him, you need to establish that he realizes you're there.

“I’m sorry,” he looks at her with tears gathered over his iris’. “I tried..” his voice breaks off and she can’t find it in herself to leave him any longer. 

She climbs into his bed and holds her arms out, pulling him to her chest. “It’s alright. You’re okay.” She brushes his hair down, kissing the area of skin that she leaves bare. 

“I wasn’t quick enough,” he gasps holding her waist like a life preserver in a choppy sea. In this bed, his dreams are waves and if he is not careful they will sweep him up and drown him. “I should have been faster.”

Tonight, it was not Foyett but it was not Jack. She’s unsure of what she is to do. How does she reassure him that she’s alright? That Foyett can’t and won’t kill her?

“Aaron,” she calls once more, pulling his hand to her chest. “Can you feel that?” She rubs his back as he nods, trying to force a yes from his lips. “Nothing is wrong with me, do you understand? You’re right here. I’m right here. We’re fine. We’re gonna be alright.”

Time passes like molasses falling from a jar. She holds him closer, daring Foyett to make his jump on them. She’ll kill him. It isn’t a threat or even a promise, it’s a plan. 

“I don’t deserve this.” The words fall from his lips so silently that she has to bend closer, resting her head against his. “You’re too good. Emily, I can’t be what you want.”

Long ago, when she was a teenager fantasizing and making her perfect man like a child would a build-a-bear, he would have been right. Then she wanted a perfect man. He’d have soft skin, with a flat stomach, abs, and perfectly styled hair. Now she knows that a man with hard skin has passion. He has something that he fights for. Flat stomachs are for models and photoshop. Abs are overrated, have you ever tried to cuddle abs? They may look good but they suck as pillows. As far as styled hair goes, the messier the better. 

So no, he hasn’t always been what she wants but right now, at this moment, he is all that she wants. “Aaron,” she hooks her finger under his chin, turning his brown eyes up to her. “I know what I want and I know what you have to offer.” She turns her hand and strokes his cheek. Stubble that had accumulated throughout the day protest against such movement. “It just so happens that we meet each other tit for tat.”

He seems to lose all fight after that statement. His body sags, as she had found that it often does this when she’s involved, and the fight leaves his eyes. Suddenly, he’s just a man who's had his whole world stripped from him. He’s not an SSA or an ex-lawyer. “Will you stay?” He sounds so hopelessly broken that even if she was going to leave she would have said yes. 

She lays back on his bed, leaning against the pillows that rest there, and pulls his shirt so that he understands to come with her. 

He picks himself up, his arms tremble under the strain, and lays his head on her stomach. There, her fingers enter his hair. Playing with the loose strands as his eyes dance along the room. 

“Always,” is all she whispers even though long moments have passed since his question. 

They lay like that in the silence of the bedroom bathed in the light coming from the hall. 

“Emily?” She can hear the husky pullings of sleep in his voice. 

She hums in response, fingers never leaving his hair. 

“I…” he doesn’t have to go farther, she understands. 

“I know.” 

He settles back down and pulls the blankets around them both. 

That’s what she meant by tit for tat. When his voice fails him, she will already know what he can’t say. When she needs a shoulder to lean on, his will always be open. 

He lets Emily’s fingers lure him to sleep. He knows that here in this place, not even Foyett can take her from him.


	5. And The Time She Didn't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guys this takes place promptly after Haley's death... like right after

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pls comment if you enjoyed, or didn't, I love feedback!

The trembling man before her is not the same one that looked at her on her first day and purposely got the college she attended wrong. No, that man was stubborn and just beginning to think about the thrills of being a father. This man, the one with blood covered hands and eyes that aren’t focused on anything, he’s just a shadow of the other. A broken memory of what was because that stubbornness is worn down and every thought directed toward being a father is wrapped in the fear that he is utterly alone. 

“Come here, buddy.” Jack doesn’t understand why his daddy is shaking or why he won’t answer he pleads. Jack needs his father and Hotch… Hotch is gone. So Rossi holds the boy close and pleads that he won’t lose two sons. The first was so very hard, he doesn't believe he can afford to lose Hotch too. 

Rossi's pleading for Hotch to say something go unanswered and several begging eyes are her way, all asking the same thing. So she walks up to him, one hand catching his red tie in her hand, and the other cupping his cheek. This catches his attention, brown eyes falling down on her. “Listen to me,” she whispers, he doesn’t respond to physical contact. She pulls him into a hug anyway. She isn’t sure what he does respond to so she gives him what she knows what she’d want. “Are you listening?”

Her hand leaves his tie, snaking up his back to his head where she pulls him as close as possible. 

“Yes,” his voice is soft, on the edge of breaking. 

“Good.” She relishes their proximately. If he doesn’t like it, he never lets it show. “You’re going to be okay. Jack’s going to be okay. Foyett’s dead and he can never hurt you again.” 

“H-Haley-”

She shushes him, rubbing a hand down his back as sobs threaten to spill from his mouth. “Haley is not your fault. She protected your son, do you hear me? She protected your son, just like any mother, and she is dead. I can not bring her back and neither can you. But you listen here…” she tapers off, losing her nerve. Haley is dead and Hotch is gonna have to raise Jack by himself. No, not by himself. “You are not alone. I am right here. Dave, Derek, JJ, they won’t leave you.” She lets a smile on her lips,” and the kid, Reid, he’s too partial to you. He’s like a leech that one, once he’s got you, he’s got you.” She wonders if he’s cheering up too,” and Garcia.” Emily pulls away, wanting to see his face. They’re so close that she could kiss him and pull away before either of them could really process the move, she doesn’t though. Instead, she holds the side of his face, thumb gently tracing the bruises already beginning to form on his pale face. “If you think that you could ever get of Garcia, sir, you’re so very wrong.”

This earns her a very small smirk and she knows it’s only there for her benefit but it helps. 

Emily rubs her thumb just over his bottom lip, a well-disguised movement as her attention goes to the split in his lip. “Now, unless you want to continue freaking out the entire team, myself included, can we go over here to the nice paramedics and make sure you’re alright?”

He nods at first and then licks his cracked lips,” okay.”

She takes a step back,” okay.”

With awe she watches him trudge towards the ambulance, Rossi, and Jack leading the way. 

“Princess,” Morgan sounds breathless and shocked,” how the hell did you do that?”

She isn’t sure. This Hotch is a Hotch she has never seen. She can take tired Hotch, beat Hotch, and dying Hotch, but mourning Hotch… she’d never seen it. She didn’t fix him because what he needs no one can give him. 

“No clue,” she glances to the others before turning back to the retreating men. “I just did why I would want someone to do for me.”

That much is true but she leaves out how it just felt right. Nothing seemed wrong about holding him. 

It’s only later when the adrenaline has left Hotch slumped in a hospital bed too tired to do anything more than snoring softly in his sleep that JJ pulls Emily aside. The brunettes had made yet another scene together when it was her name that he yelled out as he was ripped from his dreams and thrown into the poor lighting of the hospital. 

“Spill.” 

That’s all it takes. Emily does as she’s commanded. Tears tumble from her eyes as she puts words to the feelings she’s been having for what feels like forever. She tells JJ about the lake, the nightmares, her apartment, and the awful things she felt when he got shot. 

She tells JJ that as awful as it is, she wants him. She needs him and for the first time, Emily feels calm. 

JJ leans close to Emily, just as Emily had done so many times before to Hotch, and holds the brunette's cheeks in both of her hands. “Stay. Stay with him, Em. Don’t let him forget that we’re all right here and…” JJ isn’t sure how this should go. If this wasn’t Emily, JJ would be threatening bodily harm to the woman that breaks Hotch’s heart. And if it wasn’t Hotch... well, the same thing would apply. “Be careful because if either of you breaks each other's hearts I’ll kick both of your asses.”

Emily’s taken aback, yet she still kinda expects it. “You got it.”

So no, Emily didn’t fix Hotch. She couldn’t even get a real smile to grace his lips but she is here. No matter if he wants her or not.


End file.
